Cheering Team Caroline

Friday

Sep 28, 2012 at 12:01 AMSep 28, 2012 at 2:58 PM

The women of the Martin-Lanctot clan keep the family stories whirring, the energy positive, the household warm and welcoming. It’s their husbands, though, who keep this family solidly, dependably strong.

Without the men’s leadership, the Martin-Lanctots could not have accomplished a fraction of what they have. Not physically, not emotionally.

The job was too big — still is too big to manage — if any one of the guys had checked out to deal with his own anxiety or sorrow.

The guys were needed for their physical strength, for their strength of character, for their fight when it was needed, sometimes for their calm. The Martin-Lanctot womenfolk agree.

There’s 40-something Mike Lanctot at the center. And Mike’s dad, Phil, of Washington Crossing, Pa. He’s head of the family computer services business.

And there’s Lou Martin of Fallsington, Pa. He’s the warm, good-natured, doting dad to Jodi, Mike’s wife of 12 years.

Think of the trio as co-captains for “Team Caroline,” named for Mike and Jodi’s daughter, Caroline, 10.

Caroline has been paralyzed since the slushy February morning in 2003 when she and her mother nearly died in a car accident that mangled Caroline’s spine.

Jodi was in a coma for 18 days after the car she was driving hydroplaned and collided with a small truck. She was left with permanent brain damage that still affects her mobility and coordination.

Caroline, who still wasn’t old enough to walk at the time, spent 180 days in Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania. Today, she lives with a motorized wheelchair, a ventilator, myriad medical doctors, and an around-the-clock nurse.

The operative word in all of that is that Caroline “lives.”

She lives! Prayers answered. Miracles granted, too. Not the least of which was a successful surgery in July that helped to straighten her back so she is more comfortable, her internal organs less stressed.

Caroline laughs and smiles today. And sometimes, like any girl her age, she complains, argues just for the sake of argument, and declines to share her hair accessories with her little sister, Jillian, 7.

On particularly crabby days, Caroline challenges the patience of her parents, and her teachers, too. Rolled eyes. A raspberry blown in response to a question. Most recently, she suggested, expressing herself using a Dynavox — a computer that communicates her thoughts — that someone kiss her wheelchair. (“We don’t have to put that in the paper,” directs Grandfather Phil, and then he smiles.)

It’s hard not to admire the child’s fight. There is one tough cookie in that paralyzed little body. How could it be any other way?

Tough comes honestly to the child, which leads me back to the family’s men. Lesser mortals, in their shock and stress, wouldn’t have handled the challenge of supporting the women as they nursed Jodi back to health. All while figuring out how to set Caroline up to thrive.

Lou, a retired electrician, has taken full charge of transporting Caroline, her nurse, her mother, and all her medical equipment to the DuPont and Hershey medical centers for myriad treatments and health checkups. And anywhere else she needs to be when Mike is working. It’s a major production he takes on gladly.

Mike works from a home office so he can be flexible in case of medical emergencies. His company specializes in Web development and graphic design.

He’s the guy Caroline can thank for the motorized chair he battled the insurance company for. (“Just put down, ‘Dad is crazy and will not go away,’ ” he directed the caseworker submitting the application.)

The chair, when elevated, allows Caroline to eat at the dinner table with the family and to see the Phillies game over the stadium railing.

It sits empty only when the child is sleeping, and when Mike puts her into a vertical stand with wheels so she can stretch and so he can roller-skate behind her in the cul-de-sac in front of the house. He spins Caroline and her stand in circles, and the roughhousing elicits pure joy from his daughter and her mother. And sheer panic in the family dog, Bobbi, who runs alongside them in the street.

And there’s Phil, the guy Mike can lean on when he doesn’t feel so strong. The one who, on the morning we met, is the strongest, most focused presence at the Martin-Lanctot table. All business.

Phil explains the networking behind the fundraising for Caroline. In Jodi’s noisy kitchen, he cuts through the commotion and whirr of conversation to focus on the next challenge at hand.

That’s getting you — and everyone you know — to join Team Caroline and participate in the first-ever Trenton Half Marathon on Nov. 10. You can sign up now.

A portion of the marathon proceeds will be used for her care, including the purchase and maintenance of equipment the insurance companies don’t consider “medically necessary,” but, like that elevated chair, equipment the Martin-Lanctots know is essential to creating a life for Caroline that is whole.

“Some day!” Phil says to me over the din in the kitchen. “Some day. See that? Click it.”

On an iPad, he’s pulled up www.CarolinesHope.org to show me the 2004 video of Mike and grandmothers Barb Lanctot and Millie Martin talking about the “new normal” the family has embraced since the accident. There’s Phil reading to the baby. A clip of Jodi playing with Caroline, making faces to stimulate the little girl and keep her mind active.

“Some Day” is the title for the newest piece of the Web presentation in which the family details ways Caroline’s life might be improved — a chance, with the advancement of technology, for her to talk one day and maybe walk.

Do yourself a favor. Go to the website to hear the story. Do it so you can sign on to run, or to donate, or to just find some inspiration to face your own family challenge.

If you’re like me, you’ll marvel at what can happen when a family’s leaders are as strong as the family’s love. In this case, a kind, generous, cooperative strength made all the difference.

Kate Fratti’s column appears weekly.

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